Aso Says Can't Rule Out Extra Spending to Support Japan Economy

Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso
refused to rule out the possibility an extra budget will be
needed again next year to support the economy, while saying it’s
best if the funds aren’t needed.

“My honest feeling is that it would be best if we don’t
have to do it, but I won’t say there’s no possibility,” Aso
said in an interview with public broadcaster NHK that ran today.
“We can’t say whether we can avoid it until we see figures from
the July-September period.”

Extra spending next year would risk expanding Japan’s
public debt, which is the world’s heaviest at more than twice
the size of annual economic output. The government unveiled this
month a record budget plan for the year starting April 1, when a
sales tax increase is forecast by analysts to cause the economy
to shrink in the second quarter.

“The sales tax hike will have a sizable harmful effect on
the economy,” said Yasuhide Yajima, the chief economist in
Tokyo at NLI Research Institute. For Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,
“it’s vital to keep expectations buoyant. He can’t afford to
just deliver negative news to the public while trying to end
deflation.”

Government ministers and the ruling coalition compiled the
95.88 trillion yen ($911 billion) budget proposal for next
fiscal year on Dec. 21. Japan’s public debt has ballooned to
more than 1 quadrillion yen and is expected by the International
Monetary Fund to grow to the equivalent of 244 percent of gross
domestic product in 2013.

Japan’s economy will contract an annualized 3.9 percent in
the three months after the consumption tax rate increases to 8
percent from 5 percent on April 1, according to the median
estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. GDP will
probably grow 1.8 percent in the following quarter, and expand
1.6 percent for all of 2014, the polls show.

Ending Deflation

Prime Minister Abe said the government will decide whether
to further boost the sales tax as planned to 10 percent in 2015
after studying July-September economic data. He came to power
last December pledging to use stimulus measures to overcome 15
years of consumer price declines that have weighed on the
world’s third-largest economy.

“We haven’t yet ended deflation, and if we lose this
chance, we might not be able to for the next 20 years,” Abe
said in an interview with Radio Nippon broadcast today and
recorded on Dec. 24. “If that happens, we wouldn’t be able to
restore Japan’s fiscal health.”